Ambition and Resilience

Posted on: October 6th 2017

At Norfolk House we promote and encourage engagement with our school’s Core Values throughout the school day and beyond. Over the last week two of the Core Values have come to the fore - ambition and resilience. During my recent tours, prospective parents pointed out a number of times how confident the children are to contribute and share their learning, especially at this early stage of the academic year. We had a great number of children put themselves forward for School Council and Eco Warriors, confident to prepare and deliver speeches to their year groups in the hope to take on additional responsibility. We have been holding auditions for the Senior Prep production and an impressive number of children signed up to act and sing in front of the teachers with the ambition of securing a leading role. Their confidence and energy was praised by Mrs. Cannon and Mrs. Smith and I know that the children will have made the decisions very difficult.

When I was teaching Form 6 this week, you would not know that some of the children had recently sat exams for grammar schools - a pretty daunting process! They have taken it in their stride and even if the result was not what they hoped for, they remain resilient and focused on the next challenge. The children who are still to sit exams and those who are not sitting the 11+ are equally as driven towards improving themselves and all the Form 6 children have embraced their new responsibilities as the oldest children in the school.

As you can read in the newsletter, the girls U11 football team had their first match of the season against Rhodes Avenue after only one training session. Even though they didn’t emerge victorious, they had a great time and have reflected on their performance to help them improve next time - which is next week!

Finally, parents of children at the Muswell Avenue site may have noticed our display about children’s ambitions in terms of their future careers. It has generated a lot of interest from children, staff and parents with the incredible range of aspirations from the children. If you haven’t had a chance to come and see the ambitions of our pupils, make sure you pop in and have a look - you might be surprised!